


Next Days

by MischiefMakerMaiden



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, Batman: Arkham (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Child Abuse, Hate to Love, M/M, Minor Character Death, Obsession, Reincarnation, Temporary Character Death, some underage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-30
Updated: 2017-04-30
Packaged: 2018-10-25 22:23:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,201
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10773687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MischiefMakerMaiden/pseuds/MischiefMakerMaiden
Summary: "And it keeps happening. Over, and over, and over until Bruce almost can't tell what was and what is, how they're related. Bruce always remembers him, with his laughter and his mirth and the way he loves like Bruce rages, the way they clash against each other without ever burning out."OrThe one in which, somehow, somewhere, sometime they keep coming back to each other.





	Next Days

_Tight pressure. Building, building. Danger._

_Gotham: on fire. It could recover, it always did. With him to help it... Yes, that, hope._

_In the central plaza, there was nothing but deadly silence. Bodies, corpses, the sharp sting of death._

_Joker stood there, frozen smile, cold eyes, empty, empty, broken._

_Bruce didn't know what to do anymore. It was... Too much._

_"Please, please," he begged, though it fell into deaf ears. This was too much._

_"We could have been anything, Batsy. We've played our roles this life, maybe it's time to move on. Under any other circumstances, we could have become something so much better!"_

_Crazy, crazy, this man was mad._

_Bruce moved forwards. Yes, closer, stop him._

_"Don't, you've killed enough._ Please _."_

_"See you in the next life, darling. I'll meet you when the sun sets!"_

_A bright flash of light._

_A millisecond of agony._

_Then: nothing._

**_"You'll never be sad,_ **

**_And you'll never be lonely._ **

**_You'll always have me to dance with."_ **

—The Joker 

**First.**

 Bruce Wayne, age nineteen, was the richest man around.

Well, relatively speaking, really. The fact that he had the only paying job (supermarket across town, Monday through Saturday) in the dump that was his neighborhood was the only thing that made that fact true.

"Bruce, honey, be careful on your way there!" His mother shouted from the kitchen (oh, look, it was in the same open space as the exit to the house. He still didn't know why his mother chose to shout so loudly) while Bruce pulled on his left shoe.

"I will, mom," he replied in a nice, calm, inside-voice, standing up and walking towards his mother, gently pressing a kiss to her brow.

A pause, then: "Happy Birthday, son." She said this in a strong, proud voice. Bruce's throat tightened at the sound. "Wait, before you go..." She shuffled away, smaller frame steady as she bent down and retrieved a small gift from underneath the couch.

Bruce took the gift delicately, smiling at his mom. Who knew how long it had taken her to gather up the money for whatever was inside? Something coiled in the pit of Bruce's stomach. Her cheeks were gaunt, more so than usual; bags under her eyes looked like dark bruises, hidden very slightly by cheap makeup; her thin frame, always so steady and strong, looked weak and brittle, as though heavy with something unnamed.

"I… thank you, mom.” His voice was heavy with unnamed appreciation and sense of duty, of _I have to get her out of here_. Bruce eyed the wrapping, undid it with gentlemanly delicacy.

Inside glittered a watch, thick and polished, surely worth unending nights and hours after hours of slaving away for the money to buy it: it was beautiful.

It reminded Bruce, heart-wrenchingly enough, of his father’s many years ago; perhaps that was what it was meant to emulate.

He looked up at his mother and gave her a bright smile.

"Thank you," he repeated, his honesty and love and loyalty deafening even to him. His mother smiled back.

"Hush, Bruce, you'll be late for work. Go on, put it on!"

Bruce did, and after a quick hug, he was on his way.

* * *

Two weeks passed without a hitch. It was a routine: wake up, put watch on, kiss mother, leave for work, walk back late at night, kiss mother, take off watch, sleep.

Only, on that fifteenth day, everything went to shit.

As he walked back from work, body exhausted, muscles tense, he decided to take a shortcut. _Crime Alley_ , he read at the mouth of the entrance. He could not repress the shiver disgust that ran through him; something _wrong_ erupted at the base of his skull.

He went in anyways, guided by a dread-filled sense of duty.

There was no true light, only shadows and _fear_. Bruce, strangely enough, pictured Bats taking flight (less pictured, more was attacked by the vision). He heard a gunshot, and jumped. He looked around, because— a second gunshot. The sound wrecked him.

He was kneeling, sobbing, crying, something was _wrong_. Mom? Dad? Dead. Dead. Dead. I'mallalonehelp _help_ **_help!_**  He was tiny but felt a sadness bigger than this world.

A rose, a bat, a dead world. Who— what?

He blinked.

He was walking down an alley, and everything was good. No bodies, no dead family. What was happening to—

He blinked.

Soaring above a rotten city, fixing what was broken.

Four boys, four little Robins. Dick, and Jason, and Tim, and little Damian.

Oracle, Batwoman, Catwoman—

Blink.

He was laying on the ground, looking at the sky.

What was—

Blink.

Gotham city. James Gordon. The cops, good versus bad. Poison Ivy, The Penguin, Two-Face, Mr. Freeze—

Blink.

He couldn't breathe. Those memories weren't his, they _weren't_. What were these awful things? Breaking bones and arresting hundreds, hurting even more.

He turned his head and threw up.

Blink.

The Joker.

Laughs that made him rage, that dug deep into him. His fist meeting flesh and bone and a large smile.

Warmth that equated wrath and something he'd never admit to—

Blink.

He finished throwing up, gagged more, felt his body tense—

Blink.

Bats flying away. Crime Alley, being _born_ again, pearls scattering, dead parents.

Then, later, desperation, fear. Joker, laughing, always there. A dead city because Bruce had been too slow—

Blink.

His vision blurred dangerously. Mother would be so worried—

Blink.

Death and anger, loneliness, _pain_.

" _You'll never be sad._ "

Shadows and darkness.

" _And you'll never be lonely_."

A black cape and blacker armor but the blackest of all his heart.

" _You'll always have me—_ "

Haunted eyes and strong muscles.

"— _to dance with_."

He was...

Blink.

Bruce shrieked because it _hurt._  These things were agonizing and they burnt away all peace in him; they took the thing that meant he could smile from time to time.

No human should ever be that furious. What was the point to life if one was so alone? What could there ever be—

Blink.

He was _Batman_.

Blink.

Darkness consumed his sight. Pain, pain, _agony_. A sob came out of him, and he shook, and trembled, and screamed.

All that was in him came pouring out.

Blink.

A millisecond of agony—

Blink.

—Bruce Wayne's body stilled beneath the cold eye of an uncaring moon. 

* * *

  He awoke to the sharp feeling of a kick to his ribs; it was a rough thing, mean and purposefully prodding. Bruce barely registered it, being as the pain it brought was a mere droplet in the ocean of pain which had become his head. God _damn_ his head hurt.

Around him, the world seemed to shift. The pain ebbed away suddenly, quickly. It was disorienting— to go from one extreme to the other with no forewarning. It… made him want to sleep. Made him want to go back to the pitch-black peace of his unconscious mind—

He registered the cold sting of metal digging at his throat. A chill ran down his spine because he knew that feeling. A knife.

Bruce's blue eyes flew open, searching the darkness around him for whatever— no, _whoever_ was attacking him.

He couldn't see much. Beyond the shadows formed by dim bulbs at each mouth of the street, there was nothing. He lay defenseless in that pitch darkness in between; it has here, too, where in what he perceived to be another life, Martha and Thomas Wayne had died. There was nothing to help him. No _one_ to help him. Alone.

The sting at his neck persisted. It helped ground him: orient him where sharp memories of a life he had not lived pervaded in his head. He blinked rapidly a couple of times— in the second it took him to do that, he assessed the situation.

Bruce was not on the ground any longer, for one. He was being propped up by someone behind him, his assailant, presumably, the one threatening to hurt him. The man was crouching, balancing precariously as he struggled to hold Bruce in place.

A desperate amateur.

Secondly, Bruce was defenseless. With bright memories of a past life in his head, one in which he had been strong and well-trained, this fact was glaringly evident. Bruce hadn't trained for a single thing in his entire life. He'd done passably well in high-school physical education, he supposed, but between having to work minimum wage to buoy his mother and himself, and being completely uninterested…well, he was out of shape.

Too late to do anything about that.

“Alright, pre'ty boy,” a gruff voice breathed calmly in his ear. It was as rough as the kick from earlier. “You're gon' answer me one question, and you'll do it without moving a damn muscle, ’less you wanna end up bleedin’ all over this nice lit'le alley. We clear?”

“Crystal,” Bruce managed around the blade. No use in fighting now. He settled for giving the man whatever he wanted, then figuring out what was happening to  his head.

“Good answer, princess. Now, I could’ve taken everything on you and calt it a day, no need to kick you 'wake and interrupt your beau'y sleep, right?”

He'd been thinking the same thing. Bruce attempted a nod, but aborted the motion once he realized that it might seem like he was trying to struggle.

“But then I saw that beau’y on your wrist. By the looks o’ it, dat's gold, princess.” Bruce's eyes flickered to his mother’s gift. It didn't quite twinkle in the darkness, but it sure as hell was noticeably opulence. Great. “Now, I could have just taken dat, too, but you see, I thought to myself: what kind of kid owns something like that? The rich kind, o’ course. So I decided, ’ey! I'll wake sleeping beau'y ’ere and walk ’im home. Hell, he’s sure as fucking ’ell got more where _that_ beau’y came from.”

Bruce jumped at the opening.

“I got no money at home, this was just—”

 “Now, princess, _no_ _lying_ _allowed_.”

He pressed the knife in deeper. Bruce felt that first slice of skin, felt blood pool around the wound and then run down, down, down. It pooled in the dip where his collarbones met. The pain was familiar in an unfamiliar way.

He'd met this sort of criminal before, he realized— he wasn't desperate or amateurish: he was dangerous. This robber was the sort of man with too much greed and way too little care for other humans.

Batman had put plenty of men like him behind bars.

Bruce knew that whatever he did, he wouldn't be coming out of this intact (probably not alive, either, a rough voice in the back of his mind piped in). He simply wasn't equipped to deal with this sort of situation.

He held himself still, not knowing what to do, exactly. Everything was so… Confusing. He cast his eyes around one more time, taking in Crime Alley for the millionth time (a number which he'd accumulated in the _Before_ , not in this life).

Nothing, nothing, nothing there at all—

And suddenly there was man at the end of the alley, an amorphous shape consumed by shadows, one which Bruce only recognized as human because of the sound of its footsteps. Too, he heard half-gargled giggles, things which petrified Bruce because they reminded him of… of—

“Stop me if you've heard this one before,” the man said, his voice carrying all the way to Bruce’s heart, freezing it. The voice was rough and familiar and teasing and— “a clown walks into a bar, it's called Crime Alley –sort of a weird name for a bar, but I'm not the one making this up– there he finds a bartender holding a knife to another client’s neck. It's a sharp knife, sort of dangerous, ya’ know? And, and—” it's a joke. Bruce was about to get killed by a petty mugger and this man-monster-shape was telling a joke. Only one man would do that.

“Joker,” Bruce mouths, desperate for the comfort of someone he used to know. If the Joker was alive, if he was real, then maybe everyone else was, too. Dick and Jason and Alfred and Damian, maybe even Clark or Barry or—

“Stay back,” his mugger finally threatened. He didn't sound scared: he sounded overconfident and cocky. Two things Bruce _knew_ were a deadly combination when dealing with Joker.

Joker didn't stay back. Instead, he kept walking, slowly, still hidden by shadows.

“Oh? You've heard it? Oh, but I promise this one’s dif-fe- _rent_.” He accentuated his words strangely, pushing the “t” outwards enthusiastically, as though it was his favorite letter. An act, Bruce noted. The Joker was performing. “Because you see…”

The clown paused for effect. Although Bruce couldn't see his face, he was sure there was a smile upon cruelly twisted lips, he was sure the Joker was enjoying this whole nightmare because it meant he got Bruce’s attention all to himself.

Although Bruce did not know if this was a dream, whether this was all make-believe or he was going insane or everything he remembered was a lie, at least he knew the Joker. Every bit and part and inch of the clown. Among this confusion thrust upon him in the dead of night, he was glad he at least had that.

“This particular clown, he's got a _gun._ ”

“Fuck,” Bruce and his assailant for said at the same time, except Bruce's faltered as the man panicked, dug the knife much too deep.

He felt blood gush from the cut, saw some of it arch outwards, knew he wasn't going to live.

“Fuck,” the man repeated, that voice now panicked, bordering on scared.

_Try to suppress the blood, wait a few extra seconds and you're dead, Bruce. Get help once it's under control, Oracle should be able to—_ no, no Oracle here, in this life, he was alone.

Except for Joker, apparently.

“Oh! Wrong move, bartender.”

The shot of the gun was deafening. It rung in Bruce’s ears even as he fell to the ground, dropped where the now-dead man could no longer hold him up. He didn't have to look to be able to know the fact that the man had been shot point-blank between the eyes. The Joker was really good when he wanted to be.

He saw the bloody knife fall to the ground. Its seemingly slow-motion descend sparked Bruce into action. He finally moved to suppress the bleeding. He'd taken too long. It seemed this night was full of stupid mistake after dumb error. What a way to die.

The Joker moved closer, closer, closer. Bruce angled his head to see better. Eventually, the clown was close enough to be lit up by the dim bulb behind Bruce. He stopped there, unmoving, not doing a thing to help.

He did crouch down to watch, though. In his hand a gun, he himself filthy from living in what Bruce assumed was the streets; even still, he watched Bruce although _he_ was the dirty peculiarity here.

“Help...” Bruce managed, pressing harder upon the wound, hoping against all hopes that tonight wouldn't be the night his mother was left by herself. Not the night he couldn't go and find _everyone else_ from Before. Not the night he died.

He knew it was an exercise in futility— Joker wouldn't do anything he didn't want to.

“Weak,” the clown only replied. His face was pale, not white like Before; his nose was crooked, just as always; his eyes shone a crazy green, but not the toxic sort of gleam that had been present Before; his hair was a dull brown, not very exciting. Even still, he looked… Familiar. Perhaps it was the madness which radiated from his very presence. “Killed over a watch, Batsy? And it _is_ you, isn't it? Don't ask how I know, dearest. I know you don't have very much breath left it that bloody carcass. Nod if you understand, sweets.”

Bruce nodded.

“I didn't quite mean to kill us both like that last time. Well, I did, but I was hoping you'd pull _something_ out of that Batbelt and save the world. Guess not.”

His voice was tired, but he still sounded amused (the odd sort of amusement which was in no way funny, but he still clung to no matter what). It was impossible for the clown to feel any sort of _real_ regret, but Bruce was sure that if he could, he would be feeling it regarding their… Past life.

“Now, you're gonna die soon, Bats. I expected better of you, really. You might be wondering, ‘why doesn't he save me?’ Well, thing is, your below-average performance here is… Well, it's embarrassing. So, let's just say… Not very worth saving, Bats. So sorry. Not really. See you around, dearest!”

A police siren began wailing nearby— a sure response to the gunshot the had rung out earlier.

The Joker gave a bright, crooked grin. He then got up, kicked Bruce’s side roughly, and walked away.

Before Bruce went unconscious, the first step to his eventual death, he heard the Joker speak one last time. Again, it was his performance voice.

“Boys! How nice to see you!”

To the sound of a rain of bullets, Bruce fell asleep and did not wake again.

* * *

  

_I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times…_ _  
_ _In life after life, in age after age, forever._  

 

* * *

* * *

  **Second.**

Bruce Wayne was by no means an idiot.

Sure, he mightn't have completed high-school, and he lived in a piss poor neighborhood, and, well, he sort of worked weird jobs every day. Jobs you'd have to be an idiot to do... But, thing was, he was _smart_.

His mother was terminally ill, sure, that's why he did all of the above, but that didn't make him an orphan. By all means, it made him _strong._

He knew how to defend himself, how to fight, make people give him information if he needed.

But he was also clever as hell. Before he'd dropped out, he'd gotten straight A's, had some decent friends and whatnot.

So, at age seventeen, he knew better than to take jobs from shady men on street corners.

"You want me to _what_?" He asked, glancing uneasily about him.

"Just sneak into the club, all _you_ need to do is distract the performing comedian for a while, that's it."

"I'm sorry, I don't think—"

"No, no, it has to be _you_. You look like you know what you're doing, ya' know?"

"Believe me, I know, but, no offense, you look shady."

"It's fine, dude. You have until Monday to decide, alright? Remember, you have three days to choose whether you want an easy thousand."

Bruce nodded and retreated slowly away.

At the turn of the next corner, he shook his head and frowned testily.

"Freak."

* * *

In the streets of this city, poverty and filth covered it all. It was bleak, and disgusting: a rotten cancer that consumed humanity. Bruce was among the poor, but then again, so was _everyone_ . People were killed and children kidnapped, _raped,_  but life went on in Gotham city.

Bruce loved the place anyways. Wore the shadows of broken things like a cloak against evil; he survived the spears of darkness that hid behind every hand, wanting to stab when he wasn't looking. He had it in him to see good, to craft said thing as it lay just beneath the surface of desperation. He also had it in him to do what was necessary, what was not strictly morally right, but what was _needed_ of him.

Bruce Wayne did not help the Gothamites. He helped his mother— he helped the only one that depended on him. Perhaps things could have been different, and under another distinct set of circumstances, he could have been the one to protect his city. But poverty and pain had led him to this life edging on bad, but not quite there yet.

Jobs were dangerous, and in the days after that one, with the shady man in the corner, Bruce got other offers. The other offers were _wrong_ , and, no matter how desperate, Bruce couldn't bring himself to do them. He was poor, sure, and he was so, so desperate— but he was no criminal.

Bruce Wayne was smart: he made his choice.

* * *

 Three days later, Bruce was back.

"I made up my mind," he told the freak with the baggy clothes.

He looked up, a dirty smirk stretching out his ugly features.

"And?"

"I'll do it." Bruce suppressed a shiver at the satisfied look he received.

"Good, go on, kid, place's right around the corner. Can't miss it."

"So I just go in, and what?"

"Nothing illegal, kid, just make friends with the comedian. You have a week. Next Friday, keep him in the club."

Bruce didn't bother asking why, or even who that comedian was. Be just nodded and asked, "half now?"

The man, ugly and tense, nodded shakily.

Out of his pocket came a wad of bills. Bruce took them, greedy with distrust, and marched towards the club. Behind him, the man called out one last time.

“He may seem nice, kid, but watch out. He'll never want to stay past closing, at two. When the owner goes, he goes, too. You'll have to keep him much past that, you hear?”

Bruce waved without turning back, dismissing the comment; he was fairly sure a creep’s enemy was his friend. Still, he'd keep an eye out— he was a smart kid. Smart enough to be weary for sure.

* * *

After a few seconds from the shadows in the back, all Bruce had in him was pity; the poor comedian, who as of yet remained nameless, was, by far, the worst at his job. A coil of secondhand _embarrassment_ ran through Bruce with every punch-line that fell flat, caught only by shifting clients with bored faces.

Bruce was sure those things he was hearing were _not_ jokes.

At the front of the stage was a young man: dull brown eyes and dull plain skin and a dull gray suit and _awful_ jokes.

Something about him, though, something about that man made him stay there, sitting and watching and burying his face in his hands because this was just… _Awful._

“Ah… Thanks.” He finished from the stage, hesitated for a second, as though waiting for applause. No one moved to cheer. He bit his lip and moved away from the mike.

Bruce felt relief coil in his belly because, hey, at least they didn't boo him offstage.

Except he spoke too soon, because then people stopped shifting in their seats and whispering quietly about how much “that man” sucked and begun walking out and talking _much_ louder than necessary about how much “that boring fucker” sucked ass.

Bruce slumped where he was, pity boiling his insides and at the same time a thought of “doesn't he really, though?” coursed through his mind.

Still, he stayed put.

As the whole crowd shoved past his table, he kept his eyes steady on the comedian. The man simply stood off to stage right, nearly concealed by the curtain, but not quite. The man watched his audience go as though he was _used_ to it.

It was… Depressing.

Then, there was only him and Bruce. The latter eyed the comedy club with half-hidden contempt. The place seemed decadent without a vibrant audience, as though all its ugly flaws, usually hidden by laughter or clientele, were now bare to the eye.

As though the place could no longer hide anything.

“Ah…” came a voice from the stage. The comedian. “You're… Not leaving?” His voice sounded confused and full of hope and God. Even years of a hardened heart made Bruce feel for the guy. Bruce was just here for pay.

“I'm not. I just… Ah, got here.” The silence was stifling, as though the jerky awkwardness present in his comedy had followed here, its lack of vibrancy clinging onto them with lackluster fervor.

The man seemed disappointed. Bruce pressed on, sensing an opening.

“Well… You can… Uh, come down here and guide me through the highlights. If you want.”

A big, sharp smile that gleamed with… Excitement? Victory? Either way, it faded in a split second, leaving behind a small, defeated ghost of its former glory.

(Had he…? The comedian had looked like someone entirely different for a moment there… But that must have been Bruce’s imagination.)

The comedian walked closer, shyly, scared. Bruce gave him his brightest smile and most welcoming eyes. The comedian sat down gingerly, his hands fidgety above the table. And there. Bruce was in.

“Well… I, ah, I started with one of the classics, it went like this—”

He then told his joke. It wasn't funny by any particular definition of the word, but as he spewed out more words, the man seemed to recover some vitality. As he talked, he straightened out and his spine hardened up and twitchy hands turned confident. Boring turned to exciting just like that, and just by spying that transformation, Bruce managed to press out a laugh that was only a bit forced.

The comedian didn't notice, though, and he seemed to loosen even further at his companion’s supposed amusement. He told more jokes, at times even letting Bruce input comments to make a punch-line more exciting.

Somewhere along the way, Bruce’s duty turned into actual fun and by the time was checked his phone it was hours later and the comedian’s jokes had slowed to a trickle in the face of tiredness.

“—but then the boy jumped into the pool and screamed—” the comedian was interrupted by a yawn. Bruce took that as a sign to get going. It was one in the morning.

“I… Gotta go,” Bruce said, a twinge of actual regret coloring his words.

The comedian seemed to shut down at that: hands went twitchy again and the smile that had progressively grown throughout the night dissipated without a trace. He seemed… Disillusioned. Actually sort of sad.

Bruce bit his lip and watched as the man stood up and pushed the chair in, morose, wordless.

“I'll come back tomorrow.” The words were out before he realized he'd formulated them— the offer in them honest beyond anything he'd said all night. He spoke before even remembering he _had_ to come back.

The man lit up. For a small moment Bruce saw… Someone else there. Again. Brown eyes seemed to come to a lively green— he was seeing things. Nothing there.

“Will you? Oh, that would be great! My first regular.” A placid smile.

“What— what's your name by the way?”

The man burst into laughter. 

“Didn't I tell you? How embarrassing. Name’s Jack. Jack Napier.”

“I'm Bruce.”

He extended his hand and they shook on it.

Somehow, Bruce felt like he was making a deal with a devil.

But no. It was _he_ who was doing the trickery here.

“I'll see you tomorrow, Jack.”

“See ya’ ’round, Bruce!”

* * *

The day after, Bruce made sure to be early to the show. He caught sight of Jack peeking through the red curtains, his plain complexion a slip of a thing among the bright red (dirty) curtains. Bruce smiled at him and waved and immediately, the man seemed to brighten considerably and—

(Green eyes and “it's disappointing” and “I'll meet you when the sun sets” and Gotham—)

—anger came and went in a split second. It was not enough time for Jack to even register his fluctuation in expression. The comedian waved back and pulled back to behind the curtain. Bruce settled in for another terrible show.

* * *

 Afterwards, after everyone had left and complained and let out a few pitying laughs, Bruce waited for Jack.

The man, whose face had gone sour as he watched everyone leave, beamed at Bruce confidently now. He jumped off the stage with a strange sort of grace (with that gangly body of his, Bruce almost worried he would break something) and came to him.

“Bruce! I'm so glad you were here tonight. It really kept me going. And hey? Did you like?” An expectant pause.

“Loved it.” He's only half-lying, because although it did suck, Bruce, strangely enough, _had_ enjoyed it.

The comedian took that as a cue to keep on talking, and so they did. Under those dim lights the talked and talked like long-lost lovers, story after story coming from both of them, each relaxing with the passing of time.

It was three a.m. By the time both we're ready to leave, by then, the “Boss-Man” had walked past Jack with a strange expression and ordered him to close up after he was done talking with “the boy”.

The Shady Man may have told Bruce it’d take work to keep Jack there after two, but he was way wrong. It had been easy. Jack seemed to take to him with a pretty admiration that seemed to go beyond Bruce himself; that seemed to have nothing to do with _Bruce_ and everything with something else that he saw in him.

Afterwards, Bruce promised to come back and left without a backward glance. The rest of the week was much like this, Bruce coming in early and sitting at the front and staying until much after the show. Often, Bruce saw… things beyond dull brown eyes and dull pale skin and those ugly monochrome suits. These memories often made him angry, _furious_ , a fleeting, ugly thing that Bruce wished he could cling on to.

(But he doesn't understand how he could ever be angry at this man, with his endless jokes and his wide smile; doesn't understand how a certain twitch of a hand can evoke so much anger, so much distress.

(Bruce remembers carrying a boy, beaten, bloody, _dead_. Be remembers being furious enough to kill, but cannot comprehend. Was that Jack? He sometimes remembers a watch, too, a man much like Jack, but more reckless and less afraid. He remembers the cold glint of a knife upon occasion; upon others, he remembers a hellish heat that undoes him. He dimly remembers a name, but cannot grasp it. He can clutch plenty of fury, though, all at brown eyes that flash a toxic green under the right light.

(He does not want to hate Jack. They've known each other for a week— an eternity, distant memories tell him; a lifetime and a day— and he detests and adores the man already.

(Bruce cannot bring himself to abhor the flashes of another man in Jack.

(Still, he cannot lie. In truth, he would rid himself of Jack entirely and take the nameless ghost instead.

(Perhaps he should feel bad about such selfish wishes, but he does not; behind Jack's eyes, deep and hidden, he sometimes sees that selfishness, too. The other man wants Bruce to fade away, wants to take the hidden beast composed of forgotten memories from long ago. Jack wants the hidden man inside Bruce.

(For his part, Bruce is not angry.

(After all, they both want the same thing.)

* * *

 That Friday, Bruce did as he was told. Jack stayed in the club until late night, way past closing; so did Bruce. They stayed there, talking to each other with a table between them, each taking turns peering into the other’s eyes as though hunting for a stranger.

He'd even go so far as to say he'd completely forgotten about the deal— about the fact that he wasn't really supposed to like this man. A job.

No, he wasn't thinking of any of that hours after the closing of the club, just he and Jack talking in hushed tones. He remembered the second two men carrying guns flew into the room, though.

“Jack,” one of them barked. He stepped into the light: it was the man that had hired Bruce. His gun’s barrel was settled confidently onto the comedian. “Bruce, right? Your money’s outside. Little extra so you'll keep this hushed. Go.”

Bruce didn't even think about following those instructions. He didn't want money, he wanted to find the beast inside Jack— the creature that dwelled in those eyes, the monster that flashed them a corrosive green under the right light.

“Bruce?” Jack asked from behind him, voice shaken but not truly scared. He was confused. Bruce shot him a look, something he hoped would convey the fact that he wasn't betraying him. Not now.

He turned back, though, to assess the threats in front of them both.

“No.”

“No? Well, aren't you the brave soul,” the second gunman managed, stepping into the light also. His hawkish figure belonged to no one Bruce knew, but he didn't really care about whether he knew the guy aiming to blast him to hell.

The two men crowded them in, their overwhelming presence pushing both Jack and Bruce back and back towards one of the crummy walls. Their guns were steady and deadly and they aimed to kill.

“Now, lookie here, Bruce. Lex hired you to keep Jack here in this club tonight. We've got business to settle with him. His little wife—”

A sharp intake of breath from behind Bruce, where Jack, the coward, appeared to be hiding. Bruce glanced back and all he saw were Jack’s dull eyes gleaming with fear and a sane sort of willingness to live. The look was unfamiliar. Appalling.

Where was that witty creature? Was there a monster in there, or had it all been an illusion?

“— owed us a fucking whole lot before that whore decided to off herself. Way me ‘n the boys see it, it's up to him to pay that debt. Ain't that right, Jackie? You promised you'd deliver. You did not. Maybe if we shoot up your new friend here, this loyal _boy_ , you'll learn to do good on your word.”

Bruce whipped back around. Him? They were going to kill _him_ ? _Over some money and I never should have taken this damned job it wasn't my responsibility to stay and help Jack and God, my mom and my future and my city and the secret Jack is hiding he doesn't know he's hiding and I'll never find out if he was worth it—_

Something in him snapped and before he knew it, he’d avoided a bullet and his fist was on a jaw and his leg had snapped up to a kidney and the _crack_ of a nose beneath his knuckles was deliciously audible and did he even know how to fight like this? He'd never acted in self-defense, at least not so… Professionally.

But then as he cracked another bone in one of the two and everything went mutely quiet, he suddenly felt memory overtake him like a tsunami, drowning him in a painless sea of remembrance.

Once the men were dealt with, Bruce, Bruce Wayne — a different man. Different everything now that whatever had been inside him was free and he was… Himself. Truly himself— looked at Jack the creature, not Jack the man, and scooped him up by his lapels.

The transformation was sudden but expected. Flat lips stretched out to a tremendous smile, and boring brown eyes shone the green of permanency Bruce had only caught glimpses of in the last seven days.

“You _asshole,_ you let him kill me,” Bruce growled at the Joker, so close their breaths were one and the tension between them became a tangible thing. His fist tightened against the cheap lapels of the old suit.

“Ah, don't be bitter dear.” A wheeze of breath, a mildly desperate clawing finger at Bruce’s unforgiving grip. “Cops killed _me_ three minutes after.”

“What goes around comes around, bastard.” Bruce pulled the clown up higher, briefly considering launching him across the room. He didn't, though. He was too caught up in this… _Twilight Zone_ moment (lifetimes) they appeared to be stuck within.  

They were continuing their conversation from an eternity ago as though only seconds had elapsed. Everything had changed, but nothing had at all.

“And your dear ole’ city? Won't you crack my skull over that now? You're not dying right now, dearest, it's the _perfect_ time.”

“God…” Bruce managed.

His grip loosened and Joker plopped neatly to the ground. They were still very close. Neither moved back (Bruce out of confusion and exhaustion. Joker… Well… He would never waste an opportunity to stand this close to his “beloved”, would he?)

“What the hell is going on, Joker?”

“Oh, would you like to know?”

Did he actually…? Bruce nodded once.

“Well, so would I.”

That seemed to crack him right up. Bruce punched his side hard enough to crack _something_ alright.

“Oh! Ouch! Heh…” The laughter drifted off and God, Bruce could beat the life out of Joker right now. “Hey, hey, no need to get your Batpanties in a bunch, it was a pretty good joke.”

Honestly? Better than any of the other ones he'd been spouting all week.

The very memory of those days calmed him, and suddenly he didn't feel like punching, he felt like… Like…

A chuckle escaped him. Then another and another until he had to back up and gasp for breath. Jack followed suit, because even if he didn't get what Bruce was laughing about, he'd never been one of be left out of a joke.

And so they were both laughing when a rain of bullets descended down on the club. Their ruckus had clued the hitmen’s backup in on the idea that _something_ had gone wrong. They shot without looking inside.

The two gunmen received the first of the bullets. Time was so short between shots that Bruce and Joker didn't even realize until they, too, were dead.

Bruce’s last words had been but mere laughter. His last emotion a strange fledgling of happiness— killed before it could have possibly bloomed into anything else.

* * *

" _My spellbound heart has made and remade the necklace of songs,_

_That you take as a gift, wear round your neck in your many forms,_  
In life after life, in age after age, forever."

> * * *
> 
> * * *

**Third.**

The bitter sand tasted acrid upon his dry tongue; the way it burned his nose smelled like hellish sandpaper. Beneath the layers and layers of his protective medic ensemble, it crept along crevices and scraped up new layers of pinkish skin. 

Every step sunk into the sand, his posture dwindling along with his hopes as he realized that he was going to die.

His bag bounced soundlessly against his left leg, full of medical supplies and a minimal reserve of water that he needed to ration out, no matter how much his parched throat told him otherwise.

He licked sand-wasted lips with a stiff, trembling tongue. Death. And wasn't that the end result of every war, anyways?

The Enemy had come during the night. They had raided the camp (one full of wounded. This served no purpose in the grand scheme of the war— it was for Their enjoyment, plain and simple) with guns held high and wicked chuckles that had bounced around wildly until they settled into the lugubrious quiet of total annihilation.

And Bruce? He had been hidden from them by a patch of shadows— had been burying a fallen soldier by the base of a rocky cliff. He'd, miraculously, survived.

He couldn't do anything to help, is what he told himself. There was hundreds of them and Bruce had been unarmed save for a shovel and his satchel. So he had stayed in his spot until They had left and then some more hours through the night.

When the first rays of sunshine lit up the massacre, he came out to face what he could not prevent. Everything in the camp had been destroyed, anything with a soul raped or killed or whatever else the Enemy had deigned to do with them.

The radios were smashed and nearly every map unintelligible and riddled with gun-holes. There were no compasses left for Bruce to explore and most rations had mysteriously vanished.

There was Bruce’s satchel, with a topographical map of the area and bandages and stitches and topical creams and aspirin and three quarters of a bottle of water. With just that he'd ventured out west (a position he picked from the map and found because of the sun’s rising direction), towards what his map said was unexplored land.

And why? The camp had been hundreds of miles from any explored-land-refuge. The only haven, were he to find one, would lay nestled in the unknown. He ventured the desert in the middle of a sandstorm with a heavy heart and a tired body from lack of sleep.

So he marched on– squinting, aching, tired– until he stumbled over a lump in the sand.

It cried out at the same time as he, a sound which startled him into scrambling to his feet and reaching for a gun he did not have. Grasping empty air with his right hand he realized what he had been staring at.

The lump was a man. A wounded man.

No, not a man. An Enemy. His uniform was the golden color of the sand, his face was ashen with pain but his eyes glowed green with a strange conglomeration of hate and anger. There was no fear. There were also scars: angry, purple things that ran past the length of the man’s lips. They were old but obviously not well-treated; even still, they were not the cause of this man’s pain.

There was blood, lots of it, dripping out of the man’s side. A rip in his sand-colored jacket (as well as the shirt and undershirt beneath it) revealed a deep gash just beneath his ribs, the wound bleeding sluggishly into the fabric around it and onto the sand below.

For a split second he considered leaving the man there to die, but the thought was shot down as quickly as it came. Bruce was no killer: what he did was help, and, even if this man wasn't on his side, he wasn't about to violate his moral code.

So Bruce grabbed the man by the arms and pulled him up to a standing position. It was tough work, as the man wasn't cooperating, but it got done, eventually. Bruce wound his arm around the man and tugged him in the general direction of the rocky wall he'd been heading towards when he’d tripped over him.

If there was a cave there, some sort of refuge, he could help the man with his wounds. Maybe afterwards they could both look for a camp somewhere.

The only sound for a few minutes was their rough breathing and the scrape of the sand beneath their combat boots. This cacophonous silence was interrupted by the stranger’s rough voice.

“What do you think you're doing?” He asked. His limping feet kept moving amidst his confusion, and he seemed to be picking up pace. This man was not yet on the verge of death. Good.

“I'm taking you somewhere less sandy and, after I figure out what's wrong with you, I'm going to help you.” The statement was commanding, and the stranger didn't fight it. They kept approaching the ragged rocks.

Then, “Why didn't you kill me?”

“I'm not a killer, even if you are. It's my duty to save lives, so that's what I'm going to do.” The Stranger let out a hearty laugh, one which collapsed into coughing as it went on.

“Stupid. I'd have killed you in an instant.” He said it in a friendly tone, like it was nothing. Bruce expected nothing else from an Enemy, so he ignored the comment. “Well, oh, mighty hero, maybe you'd like to know the name of the man you're saving?”

Bruce, again, said nothing. His eyes spied a dip in the rocks to their immediate left. He adjusted his course and approached it. There. It was a cave whose entrance seemed to fold in on itself— he'd almost walked past it without realizing it was there. It was a lucky break, one much appreciated. They limped their way inside. 

“I'm Jack.”

A pause.

“And you are…? God, it's like your mama never taught you any manners.” His voice was slow and exhausted, but it came with a teasing tone that served to ease Bruce of any underlying worry that this man might kill him. Even if he wasn't exactly showing it, he must have been thankful enough to not appear threatening.

Bruce then settled the man– Jack– against a wall. He looked around. The cave wasn't too big, but it would do for his purposes.

“I'm Bruce. There, don't move.”

Bruce knelt by Jack, delicately unbuttoning his coat, then his shirt. The undershirt was a bit trickier, but Bruce simply settled for cutting it off once he'd stripped Jack of the other layers.

Bruce leaned in to see the extent of the damage, unmindful of the cloying stench of Jack’s blood. It wasn't wide, but was deep enough to be deadly if left untreated. Stitches would do the trick. He reached into his bag and pulled out a surgical needle along with the wire he’d need to pull the wound closed. He had nothing to disinfect the wound, not even water. This was worrying. The wound could be dealt with easily enough; it was infection that was the real killer.

“What happened to you?” He asked as a method of distracting Jack from the pain of the stitches. He needn’t have worried, really, Jack didn't seem much disturbed by the pain. Still, it was good bedside manner, if nothing else.

Jack closed his eyes as he considered his response; Bruce begun to work.

“One of yours, a woman, came at me with some sort of… claw hands. She had these little metal contraptions. I killed her before the did any real damage, but she got me with one of her little claws. Just like a cat, that one. Only one life, though. I left her body and walked as far as I could.”

His voice faded as Bruce pulled the fifth stitch closed. He'd never heard of such a woman, but still, the news of her death left him aching in some deep, primal way. It felt as though some part of him had died with the words… as though he'd known her, once upon a time.

He kept working and dismissed the thoughts of loss. War had taught him to not dwell upon such things. Around here, remembrance always preceded death.

As Bruce worked, his eyes flickered up periodically to Jack’s face. As he looked, he realized that man in front of him was blindingly beautiful. The scars on his cheeks made him look raged, but his crooked nose and long lashes gave him a boyish charm that Bruce was undeniably attracted to.

He looked familiar, in a way. He looked like a dangerous beast whose trust Bruce had managed to earn, as if by some miracle.

Bruce looked the deep gauges upon Jack’s cheeks, curious as to what they were supposed to be.

"These?" He reached for the scars with one hand. Jack opened his eyes, their splendid green shining with distrust. He didn't move away at first, though; he stayed still until Bruce's fingers moved along the rough tissue in a soft, almost tender way. "From battle?" He inquired, the soldier shied his face away, turning to the side so as to run away from Bruce's half-caress.  
  
He hummed, "something like that."  
  
His face stayed turned after that, as Bruce tended to Jack's wounds, the other stared at the mouth of the cave, the sand-dunes after it, the cloudless, empty sky.  
  
Bruce finished sewing, he wrapped the wound and sat back, less than a foot away from Jack's feet.  
  
"My comrades... They'll kill us if they find us here," Jack said after a bit, his hand splayed over his injured side.  
  
Bruce noted the wording. Us.  
  
"You too?"  
  
Another hum, low, bordering on disinterested.  
  
"They're a paranoid bunch back where I come from."  
  
"Huh."  
  
A wave of exhaustion hit him. He hadn't rested in a long, long time. The heat in the cave, the sticky comfort between them, the sense of accomplishment as having helped Jack— they lulled him into a sleepy sensation.

He lay down upon the sand, closed his eyes, tried to go to sleep. There was something unnerving about the quiet in the cave, though, something untrustworthy about the long respite there after endless months of rushed duty.

Eventually, however, he succeeded, drifted off into dark, restless dreams.

* * *

He awoke to Jack atop him, clutching his own side like it burned, the bandages under his fingers a bloody red. The man was straddling Bruce in a constricting way— it was obvious this wasn't a sexual thing; even more obvious was the fact that he meant business.

“Oh, Brucie! My hero!” He cooed, his lips culling into a grotesque thing at the edges, the scar-tissue enlarging it even further.

“What are you doing, Jack? Get off.” The man simply let out a giggle, smiled further— and oh, what the hell? The soldier had smeared blood over his lips like lipstick, the ruby-hue trailing into the scars.

Either blood-loss was making Jack hallucinate, or the man was batshit _insane_.

“Oh? You haven't remembered yet? Weird. I found that this time around, my memories came back so _fast_. As always, Bats, you're behind.”

Bruce bucked his hips, but other than a small flinch, Jack didn't budge.

There was two options here, then. Keep fighting until the weakened soldier fell to the ground (this option risked ripping open the stitches further, which just meant Jack could die), or sitting there and taking the crazy babble coming out of him.

And really? It was no contest. When recruited, Bruce swore he'd never kill anyone, that he'd protect everyone he could. He wasn't about to break that promise because Jack had taken a turn for the less-than-sane.

“Jack, you need to listen. You're suffering from blood-loss, you need to sit back, get help.”

“Help? I need _help_? Oh, Bats, didn't we both already know that?”

The man bounced up, down, up, down again atop Bruce. He brought a hand down, dug his knuckles near Bruce’s belly button.

“Jack—” a sound at the mouth of the cave.

“Shh,” Bruce urged.

“Oh? They've _come,_ how fun.”

Jack got up, turned his uniformed back (he'd put it all back on, as Bruce had slept. What else had he done, in this time? Careless. He'd been careless) towards Bruce, his ruined front towards the entrance.

Bruce looked, too, saw that there were five armed men there, each frowning viciously, murder gleaming in their eyes.

In the blink of an eye and the roaring of thunder they were all down on the ground, their blood flowing together into a river of madness. The humidity of it vanished in an instant, drunk in by sand now tinted the color of death. The bodies stayed, though, their awful look overwhelming Bruce’s mind. There was a muted thud: Joker’s spent gun falling to the ground.

“God. God, you killed them, Jack,” Bruce murmured, shocked, surprised.

“Name’s not Jack, Batsy-kins,” Jack said, turned back towards Bruce, “it's the _Joker_ to you.”

He vowed deep with a smile on his face and Bruce closed his eyes and in a moment, every moment from Before was _remembered_.

“You killed them,” he repeated, this time a _growl_.

“Ah! Dearest, you're back! Ah, how I've missed you—” a punch to the mouth effectively ended that line of conversation.

“What the fuck is going on here, Joker.” The clown didn't answer, instead opting to try and fight back.

That particular idea didn't last too long, as the Joker was weak from blood-loss, exhausted from the murderous rampage of just a moment prior. Bruce tackled him to the ground, their previous roles reversed. He pressed a naked fist harshly to the Joker’s wound, and slowly the clown abated his pointless struggle with a pained grunt.

His smile, though, that ugly thing etched onto his face with drying blood, stayed there.

“Oh Bats!” He cried, expression crumpled, ugly and angry. Too, there was a twinkle in his eye, something like well-hidden delight. “You've always known how to get me all hot and bothered.”

The Joker started struggling again, only— no, not a struggle. He was…

A wave of revulsion rolled through Bruce. The clown was grinding up against him, bucking softly enough that the movement didn't aggravate his wound too much. His cock grew hard against Bruce, not a feeling he'd ever, _ever_ wanted to experience (although, truthfully, it wasn't the first time: this, sadly, was one of Joker’s most common gags, even if usually there was several layers of armor between them, not only two battered army uniforms).

“Stop that,” Bruce growled, pressing his hand harder to the wound.

That only made Joker moan harder, half-lid his eyes in pretend-ecstasy.

“Rough, just how I like it, darling.”

This was pointless.

Bruce looked around for the Joker’s gun, found it near the mouth of the cave, not five feet from the bodies. He pushed himself off the clown, making sure it hurt as much as possible. For his troubles he received a rough grind, one more out of spite rather than… Whatever the other ones had been out of.

He grabbed the gun, eyed it, and shoved it in his medic’s bag, which he walked over to the back of the cave to retrieve. The Joker watched the whole exchange mutely, wordlessly prodding at his wound, his hard-on now forgotten, once it’d failed to get a raise out of him.

“We're a five day’s walk from my home base,” Bruce begun, walking over to Joker and sitting crossed legged next to his head, which remained turned towards him. The clown didn't respond, simply widened his smile at the proximity and clambered up to mirror Bruce’s position. “But with your wound and no water, it would be impossible for either of us to get there alive.”

“My wound? Ah, so you really do care about—”

“Your allies came from nearby, they weren't winded or worn by the storm. We’ll find their camp. Find refuge there.”

The Joker giggled, his laughter silly and childish.

“That's a great idea, Batsy-kins, but need I remind you were at _war._ They'll kill you on sight. Then me, for being wounded. Then they'll throw us in a shared grave, and we’ll go on rotting for eternity. Or. Well… I guess we'll come back. What the heck! Let's give it a good ole try!”

The casualty in that statement was a blow to Bruce’s reality— _it_ , whatever was happening to them, was just another thing to Joker. There was no time to dwell on the ugly soreness of the attack, however. They were running out of time.

Together, Bruce hovering over Joker where the other wouldn't let him _help,_ they trod further and further into enemy territory. Every mile made Bruce queasy— Joker’s stumbling wore on him, the knowing that certainly they were walking into another death wore on him, his own growing anger from Before wore on him.

He was undone by the time they reached the camp they searched for.

There, Joker took the lead, his uniform (hopefully) would serve as a white flag. Bruce lagged behind him, eyes searching for danger.

He found none.

The camp was deserted, by the looks of it. A safe haven, it would seem. Bruce sighed in relief when they were done searching every nook in the whole place, and the Joker collapsed from his wound and exhaustion just in time.

Bruce rushed to get him under the shade and re-wrapped and re-cleaned everything. He then took a wet rag (there was everything here. Strange but convenient. Bruce refused to look this gift horse in the mouth.) and cleaned the sand off Joker after laying him bare on the cleanest thing he could find.

The process was intimate, delicate. Even the Joker seemed to sense this, for he was quiet the whole time, body lax and Adam's apple bobbing as he gulped around the pleasure-pain of the ordeal. By the end of the thing his dick was hard and his fists tight and his eyes tightly closed.

Bruce ignored all this. This new territory between them, it seemed to him, didn't fit any previous memory in his head. The soft between them was forbidden.

But then the Joker— Jack, now, it seemed— opened his scar-rimmed lips and exhaled a lovely moan and murmured: “kiss me.”

The request wasn't one full of mirth or sadism but just plain desire that tinged Bruce’s cheeks a deep red. He acquiesced only in the loosest of ways, for he bent down and pressed his lips to a feverish forehead. In that moment he realized Jack would die no matter what he did, for infection had set in with the fever and well-stocked as this camp was, he was no miracle worker.

“Brucie,” Jack groaned, swallowed, gasped.

Bruce felt a deep sadness rise from inside him. He tugged the Joker to the edge of the tarp in which he rest and lay down next to him. Night was setting in and soon it would be cold. He pressed his back to Joker’s side, closed his eyes, and carelessly fell asleep.

* * *

He woke up with the urge to urinate and the deep regret of having forgotten that they were in an enemy camp. He also woke up to another soldier. One of his.

His allies had reached the camp. They were saved!

Bruce looked at Joker but he was cold. He was cold and his face was slack and somewhere along the night, he had given in to his wounds. He was dead.

Bruce shook his head and stood up in one startling move. He knelt back down and grabbed Joker’s face in his hands, hoping, hoping, hoping—

“Don't move.” His man.

“You. My name is Bruce Wayne. I am a field medic. I encountered this man a day ago, he was wounded. We came here to try and find a way to save him but it was too late.” His explanation was choppy and pointless but for some reason he was devastated, even if he did— does— detest Joker.

The man didn't take his explanation well. Bruce was taken in and arrested, accused of consorting with the enemy, of sodomy, of betraying his nation.

He was executed three days later without a fair trial. This was war. There was nothing fair about it.

* * *

* * *

  **Fourth** **.**

Blind dates weren't usually his thing. In fact, dating at all was a thing that almost never happened for him. Not because he couldn't get any, but, well, because he didn't really care to.

But a deal was a deal, and this was what it would take for his parents to leave him alone.

He settled for taking this date to an expensive restaurant, chose a table right at the middle just in case the guy turned out to be a creep and Bruce needed witnesses to tell his parents that he didn't just storm out without reason.

The man arrived in a flurry of movements, not in a rush, necessarily, but quick and sloppy on his feet. He wore a purple shirt and pants not quite up to par for the sort of place they were dining at— the big smile on his face spoke volumes about the lack of fucks the guy gave about that.

“Heya! Name’s Jack,” he breathed out, then plopped down on his chair.

Bruce was silent for a moment.

He wasn't expecting… This.

But it wasn't too bad, he settled.

“Um… Bruce.”

“Alright, Brucie, it's a pleasure to meet ya’”

Watching the man pick up the menu and wave his hand in the air in order to call a waiter over, Bruce realized the man lacked any decorum.

Jack ordered just about everything on the menu because “I don't really speak French, so there's no room to get picky” and, as he'd whispered conspiratorially to the waiter in the sort of voice fully intended to be heard by everyone in a twenty-foot vicinity, “I'm not footing the bill tonight.”

While waiting for the food, Bruce learned just about everything there was to learn about Jack, he in turn giving out little facts about his own life.

By the time the billion plates arrived, they were both cackling with laughter and Bruce was enjoying himself much more than he thought he would.

Two hours later, they were still there even though everyone around them had come and gone.

Jack licked his lips and was inquiring about dessert when one of his wayward hands went to steal a leftover from Bruce’s plate. On the way there, though, his hand graced Bruce’s own.

And one moment Bruce was worried Jack was gonna eat his way through Bruce’s wallet, the other, he _remembered_ and the table was flipped over and Bruce was pounding his fists into Joker’s cheekbone as the other laughed around a bite of steak he hadn't got to swallow.

They were kicked out of the restaurant.

They fucked in a back alley.

They fell apart together.

They continued on with their lives after that— they lived together until one day, the Joker snapped. He killed twenty before Bruce put him down.

Bruce became Batman (of sorts); Jack became the Joker again (of sorts).

They died old and tired and in love, but they got to live out every single day and Bruce didn't die with the bitter sting of regret in him, he simply let go with ease and contentment.

That one day he'll treasure, though— the millisecond between liking and hating, that night when they first met. He'll remember broken plates raining down around them and the first scandalous twist in those lips. He’ll remember the Jack in-between: the one too tame to be the Joker, too carefree to be the pathetic Jack from their second time around. He'll remember the beautiful millisecond in which his fist had yet to punch and the Joker was yet to fully come awake.

He’ll also remember grunting annoyed insults into that wild brown hair as they made out, anger giving way to fondness as all Jack did was hum comfortably words of _want_ and _desperation._

If any worlds ever blur together, he's sure this one will not be lost.

It is this one, after all, when he truly began to fall in love.

* * *

* * *

  **Fifth.**

 "A happy ending. In our next life." The clown coughed again and again; blood rained down upon them, what he spit out coming right back. "I want one of those."

Bruce came closer to him, held the back of Joker's neck with a tender hand, wrapped the other around the clown. He formed a cocoon of protection.

"Thought those were boring," he murmured, voice almost wrecked, but not quite there. They'd see each other again, eventually.

"It's not as rare anyone. Same joke told twice? Not as fun the second time around." He coughed one final time. "come'ere," he urged. 

Bruce went, allowed the clown to place a chaste kiss to his lips in that final moment, bloody and firm.

"Love you, dearest," the clown murmured, a forbidden secret, dark and irrational against Bruce's lips. It was tender and lovely: everything _they_ weren't.

Bruce didn't respond, instead tightening his hold. The clown kept on talking.

"See you in the next one..." as an afterthought, he added, "I'll meet you when the sun sets."

Then, with the last strength in his body, the clown raised and hand and sprayed Bruce's face with Joker toxin. 

"Gotcha!" He laughed faintly, and died.

Bruce had enough time to feel betrayed before he died laughing.

Figures.

* * *

* * *

  

**Eleventh?**

**Maybe thirteenth.**

**A blur.**

Raw desperation.

Fucking hard enough to shatter reality. Punching, biting, scratching.

The Joker is loud, body impassive, wanting so _much_ — Bruce is inside before he realizes it, and it must hurt so bad, but the clown only laughs louder, body vibrating with ecstasy.

"Mine, mine, mine," the clown seems to be saying in between giggles, voice wrecked.

Bruce, too, thinks the same.

It's not pleasurable: there is far too much rough burn and animal desperation for that. No, it's a claim. It's feral, and it's clear what it means.

It means they belong to each other.

* * *

* * *

 

**Fiftieth? Sixtieth?**

**He can't keep track.**

**He can't. It's too much.**

 They've been together since the dawn of time, it feels like. They, both of them, are the beginning; there is no doubt that they will be the end.

It has been… so long now. Just now they realize it— sitting together on a park bench. They are not tangled together, not fighting, not fucking. They are sitting together, at peace.

“Will we ever talk about this, Bats?” Joker asks— and that _is_ what he is, this time around. Except he is younger than when they died The First Time, he has smooth white skin and shiny white teeth. He is regally handsome in a way he'd never been before (perhaps it is that this time around he'd been lucky enough to be born wealthy; that this time, even if crazy, he'd been lucky enough to have what Bruce once had).

“No.”

The clown makes a sound low in his throat.

It's… surprise. That response is doubly troubling for Bruce. Firstly because the Joker is almost never caught unawares; secondly because they've known each other so long that by now, surely, this man by his side knows him in every way.

Perhaps he notices Bruce’s confusion, because he quirks a brow and says—

“What? You like to know things, Brucie, you, in fact, are a freak about it.” He shrugs, “figured you'd want to find out… things.”

“Not this.”

“Ah, yes, going with ye old ‘never look a gift horse in the mouth’ are ya’?”

“Something like that.”

It's not that, though. It's more about the fact that even if they talked it out— unraveled the whole thing's beyond half-hearted references, what would they do with it?

Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

In the end they still have zero control over it— victims of… fate? The universe? Whatever. Knowledge was only good when it was purposeful, driven. Talking about it would be… trapping: a realization that they could do nothing, say nothing to change what would happen to them.

They would love or fight or hate or fuck and then die and rinse and repeat.

Throughout Bruce’s thoughts, they'd both sat silently. Eventually, though, Joker gave a doubtful hum. He didn't question Bruce’s silence, though. Such actions, the Joker had learned many lifetimes ago, were pointless.

Just as Joker would not do anything he didn't want to, Bruce would never talk about a thing he had no desire to.

This meeting, though, not the last in this particular Lifetime, is one which they both intimately seem to remember.

For a long time, neither one brings _This_ up.

Bruce is nothing but relieved.

* * *

* * *

  

**Fifty-second.**

**The number strikes him like lightning. He knows he is right.**

 In this one he is a father. He has a little boy who is beautiful and sweet and strikingly different to the Damian of so long ago.

In this lifetime it is he who is the monster.

His kid is six when he makes a new friend. A boy named Jack with wild hair and glowing green eyes that make Bruce ache for something he knows he should not even be _thinking_ about.

He ignores this for eleven years.

And… there is so much he wants to say about this one, because it burns holes in his mind for millennia. It contains words that are so secret they will always be unspoken.

There is so much that it cannot be told.

Snippets. He thinks of that entire life in snippets.

* * *

 The boy gets abused at home.

He comes over to Bruce’s every day with his tough face and frowning lips and bruises that are well hidden until one day, in which they are not hidden at all (eight, now eight. It's been two years of not-staring and not-thinking). Bruce’s kid (Jason, he thinks it was. Or… Jacob. Yes. He’ll go with that) and Jack are rolling around in the mud right before dinner.

There's a soccer ball somewhere off to their right, but even so they are only wrestling next to it, ignoring it like they ignore Bruce as he watches them playing innocently.

“Time for dinner, boys. Let's take a bath!” He calls it out just like that, expecting the groans that follow but not the sudden descend of misery upon Jack’s face. It’s complete and utter dread and it settles there as Jacob goes to his room to gather his clothes.

“What's wrong, Jack?” Bruce asks, kneeling in front of the boy so they're level. He does not touch to reassure. That would be… wrong, somehow. Yes. Wrong.  

“Mr. Wayne, sir, I don't think I want to eat dinner here anymore.”

“What're you talking about? You come here for dinner every night, Jack.”

The boy looks away, biting his lip.

“Is it Jacob? Did he do something?”

“No.” It's a whisper of a thing, scared that Bruce might find something out.

“Is it… the shower? You don't wanna shower with Jacob?”

“I…” a tear slips down that pretty boyish face and Bruce breaks, gathers him up into his arms and says—

“Hey, hey, it's okay, you can shower in my room. Alone, okay?”

The boy buries his smooth, muddy face on Bruce’s nice clean shirt. Bruce doesn't even mind.

“I don't wanna… be here alone. I don't like being alone, Mr. Wayne.”

And oh.

Jacob walks out of his room and sees them there but remains mute.

“Go shower, Jacob. Jack will take my bathroom, okay?”

His boy nods and goes into the bathroom. He’s obedient and kind. Bruce loves him, but even so, a part of him knows he favors…

“Hey, here. I'll help you into the bath and you can get clean and I'll stay in there but I won't look, deal?”

The boy sniffles again but nods.

They go to the bathroom and everything is fine until it's not.

Bruce tugs the muddy shirt off Jack and sees… it's horrifying.

His skin is purple and green everywhere the shirt had covered, making of that smooth boyish belly an ugly canvass of pain. Scar tissue building on scar tissue and it is heartbreaking.

Jack isn't even breathing. His eyes are tightly closed and he seems to be shaking with something other than cold. It's…

Bruce doesn't say anything about it.

Instead he fills the bath, presses a kiss to a dirty forehead, and turns around.

“Go on, Jack. Make sure you wash behind your ears.”

Fury is building up in his belly and he'll see Jack's dad dead for it, he _will_ _._ He swears it.

Jack doesn't move for a while but when he finally does it's to come close to Bruce and whispers in his ear—

“Don't you do anything about it, Mr. Wayne. If you do they'll take me away from here and from you so please, please… don't say anything.” Bruce nods but in his heart he knows he is lying.

“The bath, Jack. The bath.”

* * *

Jack is ten now. Ten. He basically lives in Bruce’s house and he grows taller every day. There is manic gleam in his eyes and some visits he doesn't even look at Jacob, instead staring at Bruce with a strange intensity.

One day Jacob is at soccer tryouts and Jack is not. They are alone at home.

It is Bruce’s twenty-eighth birthday.

“Mr. Wayne,” The boy calls from the couch, where he has been laying for the past half-hour without even twitching.

“Yes, Jack?” He replies from the dinner table he has been tapping away at for an equal amount of time.

“I like you a lot.”

The boy is strange in the way he'll say things with no context. Bruce looks up at him to find that he has curled away from Bruce, hiding his face with his body and burying it upon the couch cushions.

“Something wrong?”

“No. I'm just gonna marry you, is all.”

… Bruce hears the comment but sits there processing it for a minuscule eternity, with his body stiff and scared and a throb in his belly that signals adoration and affection and a strange sort of lust which he will not name.

He is revolted at himself but does not do anything.

He can't send the kid home to the abusive piece of shit that awaits. He can't get rid of him and he cannot get rid of these thoughts but even still it does not matter.

Jacob enters the house in a hustle, sweaty and grass-stained and happy as fuck and Bruce…

Bruce doesn't reply to Jack’s comment. He instead turns to his son and asks how it was, how the ride home with Mrs. Anderson was, if he made any new friends.

* * *

Jack is twelve when Bruce finds him laying on his bed  with his hands down his pants and a blissful expression painted upon pretty features.

His cock is hard and he is stroking it recklessly, its pink head shining with beady pre-cum and so, so, achingly beautiful with his pretty eyes and strange personality and oh, Bruce would ravage him if— 

It is summer and Jacob is away at a week-long camp. Bruce watches long enough to capture every detail, but he stops it the second he realizes what he is seeing.

He kicks Jack out of the house after scolding him, calling him reckless, telling him his impulsivity is dangerous. He reprimands in a quiet voice which communicates bitter disappointment.

Jack does not leave the front porch even after Bruce locks it.

He stays there overnight, then the whole next day. All without eating, going to the bathroom, or sleeping.

Bruce knows because he can see him out the window from the kitchen: the kid not remorseful but still wanting to be forgiven, to be let back in.

Bruce breaks at the 24-hour mark.

He open the door and lets him in and says:

“Don't you do that again, Jack Napier.”

The boy nods and hugs Bruce tightly and goes to Jacob’s room without another word.

Bruce catches the edge of a smile as the boy walks by him but doesn't comment.

Some fights just aren't worth fighting.

* * *

The boy is fifteen when he does it again. Fifteen.

The number is striking. This is when things truly begin to change.

The years have turned Jack a bit bitter, a bit sour around the edges as he watches the world fail him again, and again, and again.

Bruce sees this happen over the years, as he takes Jacob and Jack for ice-cream when they are thirteen, then only Jack, as they both grow older and Jacob acquires so many friends he has no time for Bruce, barely any for Jack. With the passing of the years Jack slouches more, becomes more guarded, growls at anyone who approaches their little island, where they eat ice-cream and giggle at absurd jokes.

Jack and Jacob separate out of irreconcilable differences in personalities, but they are never cruel to each other. Bruce knows it is because Jacob is too sweet for any such thing; Jack does this because there is a strange thought in his mind (one which projects loudly and clearly) that in order to keep Bruce he must behave around Jacob.

Jack’s eyes go from innocent to cruel as time passes, but even so he looks at Bruce like he has always looked at him.

Every year, as the boy grows; Bruce’s sickening adoration for him grows, too. He tries to keep himself in check, he does, but he cannot pull away fully because…

Because the boy is abused at home and his scars stretch as he gains height and his muscles are lean with struggle. His hair is dyed a wild green and he must be self-destructive, with the way he wears loose shirts and jeans that ride down low enough for Bruce to want to bend him over and spank him for it.

Yes. It's for the boy.

One day, Jacob is at a sleepover and it's only him and Bruce and he should have seen this coming, with those sly looks and that cruel twist of lips.

The boy walks into Bruce’s room where he is leaning against the headboard of his bed, reading, and stands right next to him, mute.

“Yes?” Bruce inquires, his eyes not leaving the page for fear of what he will see in that face if he looks up.

“Mr. Way _ne.”_ The boys dawdles it out like honey; it drips-drips-drips past Bruce's defenses. He drops the book.

In a heartbeat the boy has climbed the bed and has his body on top of Bruce’s, legs straddling Bruce’s waist tightly.

“Fuck,” is all Bruce gets a chance to say before clammy lips are touching his own obscenely, and a pair of hands is gripping at his hair and there's a warm bulge rubbing deliciously against his belly—

“No, no, no,” Bruce mumbles, turning his head but not stopping. Not stopping the boy from doing this thing which is oh-so-wrong and no, no, no—

Jack whines keenly and keeps on at it, one of his hands letting go of Bruce and pulling out a hard cock and tugging at it for a minute and Bruce is frozen until that body freezes on top of him and comes all over the loose shirt he had been wearing before all this.

“Stop it, Jack, stop!” He pushes the kid off the bed and he lands on his back with his softening penis out and his mouth open with delight and ugly laughter which echoes all around the room until— “out! Get out. Get out right now, Jack!”

The boy doesn't move so Bruce grabs his wrist and launches him bodily out of his room, slamming the door behind him like some sort of wooden shield.

Bruce presses his back against the door and rests the crown of his head against it, silently, aching. He can still hear the giggles outside but they are quieter now, sadder.

“I had to, Bruce, I had to,” he hears and does not understand. He is covered with come and his dick is hard and stiff and he will not relent.

No. He will not do anything about this because that would make him a monster, the way Jack’s dad is a monster.

“Leave, Jack.” He murmurs, knowing he will be heard but not obeyed.

“I'll stay,” Jack replies, and stands and walks away. He will probably lock himself in Jacob’s room and stay there until morning, then leave after breakfast like he always has done.

Bruce, for his part, takes a long, cold shower, never once touching his cock but always thinking about those soft lips and that crooked nose and that _whine—_

In the morning everything goes as he thought it would.

They do not even mention the incident for years; Bruce knows it is all they both think about.

* * *

Jack’s seventeenth birthday comes like a storm.

It is the sort that builds up from silence, stinks of copper and illusions, fades away only in the wake of destruction.

Bruce and him are alone, now.

Jacob is angry at Bruce for some reason— _“God, dad, look at you. You haven't slept in months and the way you look at Jack… like you can't stand him but can't let him go and— are you listening to me, dad? I'm worried about you. We have to let him go. Are you listening? God. Call me… call me when you're ready to listen. I'll be at Michael’s house if you need me.”_ — and so it is just the two of them, sitting in front of each other with a cake in-between looking tense and tired.

Both of them have bags under their eyes and it's been a tough couple of years, with the way Jack likes to come into Bruce’s room and lay on his bed naked watching porn with his cock in his hand and obscene things coming out of his lips and—

Bruce shudders at the thought of it and pinches his leg angrily.

He will not give in, he will not.

“Well,” Jack lets out awkwardly, his smile big, his long green hair framing his face delicately.

“Happy birthday, sweetheart.” The endearment slips out of Bruce’s mouth and he regrets it instantly. It creates a terse atmosphere around them which will not dissipate, no matter how much Bruce fidgets in his chair.

And the boy, damn him, is doing nothing to stop this.

If he does anything Bruce will kick him out. He’ll never let him back in. For his own good. Yes. He’ll not do a thing to ever help this boy ever again.

 There are no words, now. Bruce cannot move.

Jack stands quietly, closes the gap between them with delicate steps, kneels down next to Bruce. The boy coaxes his legs open with the soft touch of a hand (a command Bruce is too scared to ignore. Too weak to not heed) and carefully, oh so carefully, unbuttons Bruce’s pants, lower the zipper, and tugs at Bruce to come forward in his chair.

He does, damn him, he does.

He follows the boy’s instructions without even thinking.

Pink lips part and suddenly there is a moist heat over Bruce’s crotch, the only thing between them in this intimate moment the wet cotton of Bruce’s white boxers.

Quiet. It's quiet when, after eleven years, Bruce gives in to his demons.

A tongue prods and begs for more and Bruce grants him his by pulling Jack’s face away with a soft touch, meeting those enticing green eyes, and lowering his boxers and jeans in one clean move.

There is no smiles, only longing and misery because they must have been meant to be, if they met each other like this and Bruce protects him from the world and they are all each other needs.

Jack licks at Bruce’s head slowly, swallows him down into his smooth throat and fucks himself with it slowly, like he enjoys every second of it.

Eventually, eventually, Bruce comes so hard it leaks out of the boy’s mouth even after the kid swallows half his load.

In the moment between bliss and the guilt that was about to follow, Bruce… Bruce and Jack, they _remember_.

In a split second Bruce has the clown by the throat and the other is laughing and licking salty come off his lips. He doesn't know what to do in that moment but he doesn't need to, because now Jack wraps his legs around Bruce and a few minutes later—

They are naked and Bruce has his dick buried so far up Joker’s virgin ass that there is a bulge protruding from a skeletal belly.

“Mine, mine, mine,” Bruce whispers over and over again as he presses kisses to Joker’s neckcheekseyelids and thrusts in and out of that tight heat relieved, so relieved that there is a reason he has been grappling with himself for so long over a boy.

They belong to each other, after all. It makes sense, so much sense that he has waited for so long for this very moment.

It was never about the sex or Jack’s youth but about _this_ —

Bruce comes inside the clown and stills because… even so, Jack is but a boy.

Joker leaves the house with a limp but not a word.

He comes the next morning covered in blood and smiling widely at Bruce and saying—

“He fucking deserved it, for what he did to me,” and he's committed patricide but it doesn't even feel wrong to Bruce, anymore.

“I deserve it, too,” he replies, but does not struggle as Jack straddles him and whispers secrets in his ear that no man should ever hear out of a boy’s lips.

* * *

 They find Jack guilty less than a week later.

They try him as an adult and he gets sentenced for life.

He stays where he is supposed to be for less than a week, but in that week Bruce visits him every day. From behind that bullet-proof glass he likes to think that this is his punishment for not waiting. Now, he is doomed to wait until their Next Life.

That illusion of godly reprimand is shattered the day Jack escapes his prison, picking Bruce up from his home on his way out of the city.

Bruce leaves Jacob behind with a guilty heart but knows, knows the boy will be alright without him in a way he cannot be without Joker.

He leaves his significant fortune to the boy and never again talks to him.

He and Joker live together in hiding until they are both old and Bruce dies one day of a heart-attack.

It is a life of guilt and mistakes but most of all, it is a life of irrevocable change.

It is then that Bruce begins to see the way this Thing is warping him.

He barely musters up the effort to care.

That is that.

* * *

* * *

  **Seventy-something. Less than eightieth.**

**Probably.**

 They must be slipping down a rabbit hole, now.

The world takes sharp turns and colors diminish and explode around them but the ever-present darkness in both their hearts is a constant.

In this lifetime he meets a man who resembles Clark in every way. Except this man, he _is_ a man, not a God among frail creatures. That, perhaps, is the only difference because his heart is pure and good and he smiles a smile that must taste like sugar, just from the look of it.

A strange sense of nostalgia which he cannot explain consumes him in this lifetime, and so he marries this not-Clark without knowing why until one day at work he bumps shoulders with a criminal being brought in for questioning and vertigo hits him so hard he throws up then and there.

He is horrified by how he has used his husband (whose name he will forget sooner rather than later. In later lifetimes, all he can think of him as is not-Clark and that is how it remains until… until) and disgusted by how he has been loved by not-Clark so sweetly for so long and even so he cannot…

They've had it so good for so long and even so he loves the criminal cackling by his shoulder with a passion so strong it burns like a supernova.

In that lifetime he divorces not-Clark less than a week later.

He does this because he know that if he does not, he will cheat on him every day, every hour, in his heart and in his mind and with his body.

He doesn't remarry but he does move in with the Joker, years later.

Not-Clark never forgives him; Bruce… Bruce… five lifetimes later Bruce has forgot everything except the feel of Jack wrapped around his heart. Not-Clark and his unforgiveness is as inconsequential as every instant not spent with Joker.

* * *

  _Whenever I hear old chronicles of love, its age-old pain,_

_I_ _ts ancient tale of being apart or together._

_As I stare on and on into the past, in the end you emerge,_  
_Clad in the light of a pole-star piercing the darkness of time:_ _  
_ _You become an image of what is remembered forever._

* * *

* * *

 

**An intermission.**

**In some worlds he is so different he isn't even Bruce.**

**This one doesn't really count.**

 In this one, Joker is dead by the time Bruce gets to him. He is a beat cop, tired, exhausted from a lifetime of constantly searching for something— someone— to fill the void in his heartmindsoul. He knows as soon as he sees Joker, there, dead, that he will never attain what he searches for. The one he's meant to find is dead, dumped in a ditch for petty cash or drugs or, knowing him, making a joke at the wrong time.

In this world, Bruce puts four bullets in the killer, then eats the fifth one himself. He dies knowing there's no sense in living a life in which he is alone.

This reality— it is not real. Jack or Joker or whatever. They are one and the same and together or not at all. Before his death he is happy and expectant even as he takes his own life. He is not too blind to see the dangerous codependency that has formed; he is not naïve enough to think there's anything he can do. This. Them. It is the only thing there is.

* * *

* * *

  **More.**

One time, Joker is madder than anything Bruce has ever seen. He speculates that it is the weight of the timelines, a baseline madness cracking and cracking, stacked atop a weak will in this particular universe.

The Joker, then, is a raving lunatic. He pisses himself and spits with every word and has a tendency to grab for his crotch whenever Bruce is in the same room as he. His eyes do not gleam. They are faded and dull. Bruce wants to kill them both and hope to hell Joker will wake up better (not sane, never that, just less… inhuman, more himself).

Bruce does not comply to his darker wishes.

He goes to the asylum he was meant to intern at, at the beginning of all this, (not Arkham, not that bad, but not _good_ , either) every single day for a year, two years, ten years…

He does not quit because it is hard, this time around. Eventually, he coaxes some sanity out of Joker; he wrestles the overwhelming madness into a sort of deadlock, a truce of will. We does all this through his devotion and love.

Still, Joker is often disoriented, raves even more than that. He still has trouble keeping himself in check and his dick in his pants but by the time they're both thirty, Bruce knows it's more of a joke now, to him. He loves making Bruce uncomfortable. Still, on some days he is bitter and distrusts himself and cowers from his own mind. Even on these days he comes to Bruce like he is home. This is the only reason Bruce does not give up.

* * *

The next time around, when Joker realizes he did all this, things change. They change but Bruce cannot describe it. It must be a secret, unspoken thing. The truth behind the purpose of reality and the universe.

* * *

* * *

  **Hundredth. At least. At most? Billionth.**

There's also a time in which they're kids: first friends then lovers then everything in between. That time, they don't realize how much hate dwells in their pasts until they're drowning in a sea of sticky sweetness and soft, easygoing love. That time, they feel forever not branded into their skins, but etched deeply into their hearts; a symphony that is equally intense, but lacking the hellish notes that usually precede their love.

One day they simply remember, laying side by side, and they look at each other, but in their eyes they have not changed. They are still Bruce and Jack, their love a thing that holds this life together, does not pull it apart.

That is a good one; it’s also a rare one.

They both keep it held tight, though, their little dream amidst a nightmarish landscape.

A haven— knowledge that their love _could_ be good for them, even if it's almost always not. 

* * *

* * *

  **Forever.**

And it keeps happening. Over, and over, and _over_ until Bruce almost can't tell what was and what is, how they're related. Bruce always remembers him, with his laughter and his mirth and the way he loves like Bruce rages, the way they clash against each other without ever burning out.

Sometimes they die young, and others they're together until they're old and decrepit. But there's always Bruce and Joker, or Jack and Batman, or Batman and the Joker, and oh, oh, _oh_.

Sometimes (always, always, always,) they love each other, and they kiss and hug and it's _soft_ . But others they hate each other, and they fuck, raw and cruel, and they bite and kick and _break_.

And sometimes Bruce is bad, and the Joker is good, and things are twisted so far that the original _them_ is but a faraway memory.

There are zombies, and Owls, and innocence, and lack thereof. Sometimes one is old, and the other is young, and things happen which no one likes.

But it's always them, when it comes down to it. When the lights all fade and the sun is setting, it's them two, dancing their petty dance and people die, but it _is_ them.

Like promised, neither is lonely.

And as Batman, or Bruce, or dying, or dead, that's the way he feels it should be.

With the madman always by his side: someone to kiss or kill.

And it's them, them, them.

And it's _never_ gonna end.

* * *

  _You and I have floated here on the stream that brings from the fount._

_At the heart of time, love of one for another._  
_We have played alongside millions of lovers, shared in the same_  
_Shy sweetness of meeting, the same distressful tears of farewell-_  
_Old love but in shapes that renew and renew forever._

* * *

* * *

**Last.**

Until it does.

Somehow, with the sun setting in the distant horizon, Bruce knows it is the last.

There is an edge of finality about this life: the way colors are brighter than before, the way he can remember everything about every eternity they've wasted away within, the way passion and love and fury burn bright in his chest and his mind the very second he is born.

He knows, unwittingly, this is their last stand.

Bruce is not afraid; he welcomes this end like a long-in-coming friend, a sweet bitterness he’d longed for and dreaded since the very beginning.

The last time, then, he is in plain-clothes.

He is a billionaire, his name is Bruce Wayne, his parents are dead, his only mentor is a butler named Alfred, he knows a devious woman whose name is Selina, he believes in justice (in all this, even still, he is not the Batman. That, he knows, is for the best).

Running laps across a local park, his gaze catches a small stage, the sort built upon a downwards slope, meant for the occasional small-town show. The seats themselves are made of what looks like thin cotton covered in cheap blue cloth. That is not all that calls to him, though. In essence, it is the man sitting smack dab in the middle of the rickety stadium, a man Bruce knows all too well— he wears a purple coat, its velvety surface gleaming in the orangish beams of the setting sun. His hair is a wild bush of green, and Bruce… He just stops.

The man– the Joker, his mind provides, the sound of it in his head chocolate-smooth and delicious– claps wildly to an empty stage.

“Amazing performance!” Bruce hears, the exclamation loud enough to override the moist gusts of wind that toss tuffs of that green hair back and forth.

No one around seems to hear it, however.

That does not matter.

Climbing underneath the rope that’s supposed to keep away passers-by while there is no performances going on, Bruce walks downwards.

He must know, touch, feel, punch, kiss, hurt, _love_ —

“We did amazing,” the clown intones, his voice proud and amused and so very fond.

“You've never been more right,” he answers, sitting down right next to the clown.

He looks just like he did that first time, back before they’d ever died. His face is thin, his lips a ruby red Bruce could punch (kiss) until the very world tore itself apart, his eyes are wild, crazed and green and toxic. But wise, too. Those eyes seem to have learned something in all these years; seeing so, Bruce is beyond pleased.

“Oh, Brucie, I've missed you.” The Joker stops clapping then, instead opting to tilt his head and lean upon Bruce’s shoulder.

There, surrounded by sunset, they are at peace.

“Do you feel it?” Bruce murmurs after a contained eternity.

“Our last vow,” Joker replies, equally soft.

In response, he only hums. The clown knows it, too.

“It's strange,” Bruce manages after a moment. And it is, so many things about _them_ are.

“How we’re not afraid? That it stops now, after all this time? How you never get sick of me telling the same jokes? How _I_ never get sick of your dull face?”

Yes. To all that. But mostly, it's strange how much they've learned.

The years have tempered the storms that have raged within them; the overflowing liveliness they each had in their first life slowly drip-drip-dripping dry and dry.

“It's strange that you knew it was love before I did,” he answers, it in itself both a confession and a curse.

“Love is crazy, Batsy dear. I'm an expert in crazy.”

A huff of a laugh follows from both of them, a joke that must have come out of those pretty lips a million times.

“I feel so old.”

“Older than time itself, darling. That’s you and me. An immovable object—”

“And an unstoppable force,” he completes.

They sound old, too.

Here they are only decades old: on the inside, they have lived millennia.

“What’d’ya say, finish this one good? A little reconstruction of the past for ole’ time’s sake— the amazing Batman and his devilish arch-nemesis, the Joker.”

“Just like we started it, Jack. I'd like that.”

The Joker lifts his head and presses a sweet kiss upon Bruce’s cheek, full of devotion and kindness.

“Love you, sweetums,” he says, so very pure and sane and honest that Bruce wants to ravage him, break this easy shell and keep the man inside. His gloved hand comes up and places something small to Bruce’s own palm.

He looks.

It's a ring. A simple golden band, pure gold forged into forever.

“The one thing we never did,” Joker declares. He does not ask a question— as is in his nature, he simply demands and takes. Not that he really needs to ask, anyways. The answer has been yes since… Since forever, he supposes.

“Love you too,” he replies, taking the ring and sliding it easily on his fourth finger, the left hand. A pause. “You stole it, didn't you?”

“Mm… Yes,” the clown giggles, winks, and bounces up. “Well, my Dark Knight, shall I expect a date tonight at, say, eleven thirty?”

“Make that twelve, I have to buy you a ring now.”

“Deal!”

Then he leaves, climbs the steps two at a time with a merry bound in his step, jumps over the rope like it is not there. Every single one of his moves is familiar, part of the image that has hard-wired itself into Bruce’s very core. He thumbs the ring and smiles.

It’ll be a good last one, he’s willing to bet.

From today on, it’ll be harsh and dangerous and painful and wild and beautiful and bloody and painful and _lovely_ — them and them and them.

As he stands and watches the light fade around him, he realizes the Joker’s last words, so very long ago, now ring true:

“ _I'll meet you when the sun sets, sweetums!”_

He smiles and sets off, away from the stage.

Although this is their millionth time, he feels the passion burn in him as though it were the first.

Good, good, it's been amazing.

The desperate gasps of breath that first time, they seem like a distorted echo now. He realizes just then, as he resumes his final laps around the park, that perhaps the first time they both lived so erratically because they had so much life inside them— they thought it was their only shot, their only chance to pour out every feeling they had.

He wouldn't say they’ve run out of them by now, but they've tempered. They don't need to live forever anymore: they've learned everything they'll ever learn.

A little short of breath, he steps out of the park and walks home.

In arriving, he finds a gift box half his size, a tag attached to it reading in glittery purple:

“Wear this tonight handsome ;) XOXOXO”

He huffs out a laugh and open up the gift wrap— here, inside, is a perfect replica of his Batsuit.

Also, taped to the chestplate, is a letter.

He picks it up, rips it open.

“ _Dear Brucie,_

_“I wrote this thing a long time ago. Snippets, every life_ _I've_ _we’ve lived. It's not funny, but I'll let it be, because, well, you're not that funny either. Like and like and all that._

_“See, sweets, I should clarify, I've loved you since that day, when you created me so very long ago. I’ve loved the smile that ugly scowl hides from me. I loved you before you even understood love, dear, and if that's not hilarious, then I don't know what is. I smile for you, Bruce, I never smiled before I met you— the club, remember that? Ah, well, I wasn't very good back then. But the second you came? Well, everyone was_ _dying _ _laughing. It's you, Bats. You. I'll never say this to your face, I haven't in this long, I won't say it now. Too sappy, bad for street cred._

_“You're perfect, darling, and us together? We make_ _~~something beautiful, and when we lay side by side and just~~ _ _the perfect storm. We've made something_ _~~good~~. _ _Forget this paragraph, too sweet. Not like us at all (except for once, but we don't talk about that, either.)_

_“Anyways. Know that I've loved you since then, deary, and you're_ _mine_ _. We complete each other, and that's what's good. I'll always find you, even after this is over._

_“Me and you and me. Us. Laughing and fighting and punching and hating and loving and oh, how I've enjoyed this._

_“Let's make this a good one, dear. It's the last stand, our big finale (something so big it can even top my Big Boom!), the last chapter and whatnot._

_“There’s other things, too. Things i’ll probably never say to your face, but I won't write them either. Some jokes are better left untold, dear._

_“P. S. I want my ring in black.”_

And at the bottom, instead of a signature, is what Bruce knows is the last stanza of a poem he read a long time ago. It is sweet and true and brings a smile to Bruce’s face. This, he knows, is the exact reason it’s been so very good. 

_Today it is heaped at your feet, it has found its end in you_  
_The love of all man’s days both past and forever:_  
_Universal joy, universal sorrow, universal life._  
_The memories of all loves merging with this one love of ours –_  
And the songs of every poet past and forever.

 The last word rings in his mind, he tastes the word, says it out loud just to make sure it is real.

 Yes.

  _Forever_.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> The poem’s called Unending Love by Tagore. It was largely the inspiration I used to write this. Thanks for reading! As for the tense shifts, those are to mark the shifting perspectives Bruce takes throughout this tale. I point this out because I'm a nerd, not because it's a big deal.


End file.
